


Invoco

by BlueLightningAndNexus



Series: Blue Lightning and Nexus' Multiverse [8]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Fantasy, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Spirits, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24764146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueLightningAndNexus/pseuds/BlueLightningAndNexus
Summary: Ciara Jessamyn had always thought that there was something different about her. Her father, Brian, had perished when she was young, leaving her mother to take care of her.One night, she awakens a spirit known as an Anima, which is dedicated to protecting her; and she accidentally becomes an eyewitness to a fight between Anima-users.
Series: Blue Lightning and Nexus' Multiverse [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1798072





	Invoco

The figure stood in the corner of her room, eyeless and watching Ciara Jessamyn. 

“Who are you?” she asked. The creature had no ears, yet Ciara was sure it could hear her: the quivering terror of her voice, subtle yet present, meshing uncomfortably with her calm demeanor. 

The curtain was half-draped over the massive window, moonlight spilling in, illuminating Ciara’s features and the figure across from her. It’s legs were crossed, arms folded, darkness covering half of its physique; she couldn’t make out what it was wearing, or even what it looked like at all, but it seemed to be covered in red. 

_Is “it” the right word?_ she thought to herself. This thing was certainly humanoid, with a visible head, diaphragm and limbs, but it wasn’t human; it’s fingers were unnaturally long, its head tall and slender, its face lacking eyes or a nose. 

“I’ll ask again,” she muttered, “who are you?” Her nervous, horrified trembling dissipated, a tranquil terror settling over Ciara. She desperately wished her mother was here to help her. Levy Jessamyn didn’t always know what to do, but she knew her daughter and she knew how to protect Ciara. 

Her head fell to the left side, the figure mirrored her motions, a dark reflection of herself. As its head fell to the side, it’s features became further illuminated in the moonlight. 

Or, rather, the lack of features. 

The entire head was devoid of detail but moving, as if it were a sentient, floating sphere of living liquid. The sight shook Ciara to her core; she jumped back in her bed slightly, and found the figure once again mimicking her actions.  
Her breathing increased, thoughts of fear racing through her mind. _What is that? Is that what dad saw? Is that a person? A machine?_

Curious, she raised her right hand. The person--the thing, rather--raising its own right hand. Ciara’s breathing slowed, her stress alleviated by the sight, if only a little, but she couldn’t understand or explain why. 

Her breathing steadied, then became silent. The only noise was the slight creak of the chair, wooden and rigid, as the figure moved in it. 

It was half past 3:00 am. Ciara had only gotten up to use the restroom in the middle of the night. When she came back, she didn’t expect this thing to be waiting for her in her room. She looked over at the window. It was still closed, and she hadn’t heard it open; the same goes for her bedroom door. It was as if this enigmatic, faceless figure suddenly materialized out of nowhere. It looked almost as if it were made of...blood?

Ciara threw her legs over the right end of the chair, her feet grazing the cold ground, then firmly planting themselves on it. She pulled herself up from her bed, watching with a childlike glee as the figure followed suite. Ciara never had a dog, but based on what Ciara told her, she imagined the satisfaction of allowing this creature to mirror her objects was much like teaching a puppy its first tricks. 

This silence, while peaceful, was short-lived. 

Ciara nearly fell over, a loud, ringing sound bursting through the musty night air. “What IS that!?!” As quickly as it started, it stopped. Then started again. 

This time, the noise was more intense, almost painful. She fell out of her bed, and ran over to the window. 

Gazing through the dirty glass, she saw two people--one a woman with Asian features and short black hair cut in a bob, the other a man with long ocean blue hair in a ponytail and a tattered military jacket--standing several feet apart on the dark street, the scene illuminated by a single flickering streetlight. 

The ringing sound was heard again. _No, not a ringing,_ Ciara realized, _but the clanging of metal on metal_. Each of them had weapons drawn--judging by the length and the gleam of the blades in the light, it seemed to be a variety of swords. 

Two additional shapes ran through the night, hiding in the shadows. It took Ciara several seconds to make them out, but once she did, she noticed something unmistakeable and wrong. There were two more combatants, but they weren’t walking or running on the ground. No, their feet were hovering a couple of inches above the cracked concrete.

What the hell is going on? She wondered. 

These two new combatants...they didn’t look normal. Even discounting the fact that they seemed to strike and dodge at a rate much faster than normal humans, they just looked **off**. One of those combatants was quite tall, easily over 6 feet. It had a thin suit of dirty metallic armor, and no less than four swords strapped to its back, as well as two in each hand. It had a thick bamboo hat resting on its small head. The other was shorter and in a black cloak; Ciara could make out glimmering white light, which she figured were the figure’s eyes. _But who has eyes that were completely white?_

But the people on the street--the man and woman--weren’t moving at all. They were largely motionless; the cloaked fighter would deflect attacks aimed at the man in the military jacket, and the sword-wielder would block strikes intended for the black-haired woman. They seemed to be protecting their respective allies. 

Ciara opened the window and crawled out onto her apartment building’s fire escape, the metal creaking underneath her weight. This creature in her room wordlessly followed her. She was now convinced that it wasn’t a person; as it mimicked her movements and came out the same way she did, it hovered slightly above the ground, the same as those two combatants in the street. 

Now that she was outside and didn’t need to gaze through a dirty layer of glass, she could get a clearer look at the four people on the street. The cloaked figure was using a variety of throwing knives with one hand, launching them at the black-haired woman. Every time, her ally with the swords would slash the knives out of the air with one of its mighty blades. Similarly, every time the swordmaster would attack, the cloaked figure would parry the move with a particularly shiny short sword. 

After several more of these strikes occurring in the span of only a few seconds, the woman spoke. 

“Alright, Noriko, I don’t have time for this. We’re finishing this now.”

The blue-haired man laughed, a dry, mirthless chuckle. “Well, I was about to say the same thing.”

The woman sneered. “Jurojin! End this!”

Ciara couldn’t believe what she was seeing. In an instant, the sword-wielder suddenly sprouted two more arms, protruding from beneath the already-existing pair. Ciara watched in shock as the hovering combatant’s third and fourth arms grabbed two more swords strapped to its back, and suddenly darted forward with even greater speed than it was displaying previously. It viciously attacked, striking left, right, high and low at the cloaked figure. 

The cloaked figure could only parry so much. Two of the blades locked its short sword in place, and with its other two arms, the sword-wielder dealt a finishing blow. Ciara wanted to close her eyes, but her gaze was glued to the sight. She waited, preparing herself for the inevitably grisly sight...

But the final strike never came. The cloaked figure disappeared in a flash of blue light, and suddenly appeared behind the sword-wielder--Jurojin, its name was apparently--and directly in front of the woman. 

“Shizuka Saboru, you put up a good fight,” the blue-haired man told her. “But enough is enough. Shadowfront will rain victorious, Reina will rule over this town, and your Jurojin Swordmaster is no match for my own Anima: Light in the Night Sky!”

 _An Anima?_ Ciara asked herself. _What the hell is that? And how did it just teleport?_

Before she could get any answers to her questions, she saw this cloaked shadow raise its short sword, ready to stab at the woman, Shizula. 

Ciara couldn’t just let that happen. Without thinking, she suddenly stood up, still on the fire escape. 

“HEY!” she shouted at the man. “LEAVE HER ALONE!”

The man, Noriko, looked up at Ciara, and his Anima suddenly stopped mid-strike. They both watched her eagerly, their focus taken off Shizuka and Jurojin Swordmaster. 

“Oh, outside interference?” he thought aloud. “I wasn’t expecting this.” Turning to his Anima, he issued an order: “Night Sky, kill her.”

Once again, the creature was gone in a flash of blue, only to appear right in front of Ciara. 

“Shit!” she shouted. Night Sky swung down, aiming for her head, but the bloody creature that had been following her all night intercepted the blow. 

Noriko let out an annoyed sound. “Tsk, she has an Anima of her own?” Ciara heard him murmur. “This’ll be trickier than I thought.”

Night Sky took another swing at Ciara, and once again, this familiar of hers--her own Anima, whatever the hell that was--blocked it. Ciara turned around, running down the fire escape of her apartment. She was positive that if the sound of clashing weapons didn’t wake everyone else in her building, her frantic footsteps down the metal sure would, but she didn’t care. Right now, she was running for her life. 

As Ciara ran, she noticed that her own Anima had some kind of weapon in its hand. It was as if its arm elongated and morphed into some kind of scythe that it was using to combat Night Sky. 

Ciara hit the ground, having run down the three flights of stairs of her building’s fire escape. She turned around and found that woman, Shizuka, and her Anima, Jurojin, were running away from the fighting. 

“Sorry, sweetheart, but you’re on your own,” she told Ciara. Shizuka looked up at her Anima. “Jurojin, come back to me at once!”

The massive swordsman suddenly faded into a white dust, which seemed to merge with Shizuka’s being as she sprinted away from the fighting. Ciara didn’t have time to take in the strange sight before she heard the sound of two simultaneous impacts on the concrete. 

She turned around and found her Anima fighting against Night Sky. Her Anima had started wielding the scythe it created in a two-handed stance, and was fighting much more aggressively. Night Sky could barely keep up. 

“Hm, interesting,” Noriko muttered. “Either you’re some kind of master, or just a ridiculously talented novice with your Anima,” he told her. “Based on the confused look painted all over your face, I’d say it's the second one. You don’t even seem aware of how to control it. It must just be doing everything automatically, isn’t that right?”

Based on the edge to his voice, Ciara instinctively wanted to feel offended, but she was too confused to even know what the hell was going on. 

As Ciara stepped into the light, their Anima fighting each other with rapid strikes, Noriko got a closer look at her. 

“Look, just let me walk away from this,” Ciara told him. “I don’t understand what’s going on here, but all I know is that nobody’s dying tonight. Not me, not you, not even that girl.”

Noriko laughed. “You know, you remind me of someone I know. Someone I even had to kill. Hell, you even look like him.” He pulled a stray strand of blue hair off his face, a pensive and almost nostalgic look on his face. “Anyways, what’s a child doing getting involved in a skirmish like this? You’re out of your depth. I won’t leave any eyewitnesses, even if it’s a little girl.”

He looked over to their two Anima. The two were in a stalemate, and Ciara’s Anima jumped back, close to its master once more. 

“Fine, if I can’t hurt your Anima, I’ll just hurt you!” Noriko announced. Light in the Night Sky teleported once more, and was suddenly behind Ciara, ready to stab her in the back. 

She turned her head just in time to see the creature pulling back, ready to attack. For the first time, she got a good look at the Anima’s face: it was thin and almost skeletal, and what little skin remained on the fighter had turned gray and dead; combined with the black cloak and white eyes, and it looked almost like some kind of grim reaper. 

Ciara prepared for the worst, but for the second time that night, it never came. Two gunshots suddenly rang throughout the night, and Ciara became aware of two holes in the Anima: one in its skeletal face, and one in its blade. 

It jumped back, and Ciara turned around and looked back up at the side of the building to find her mother, Levy Jessamyn. She was on top of the fire escape, having just crawled out of the window that Ciara left open. 

“Leave my daughter alone!” Levy shouted. She was holding a smoking glock in her hand, and she adjusted her aim, pointing right at Noriko. 

“Try anything, and I’ll kill your daughter,” he told Levy. She smirked. 

“You really think so? You think your Anima can attack her faster than I can pull the trigger?” Ciara had never heard her mother speak like this: threatening, yet calm, almost amused. 

Noriko looked to his Anima, then to Ciara, and finally at her mother. 

“Fine, but you’re only delaying the inevitable. If I don’t come back to finish this job, someone else will.”

With that, his Anima floated over to Noriko, slowly, carefully. Levy kept her gun trained on them the entire time. Finally, Night in the Light Sky was next to its master, and it placed a hand on Noriko’s shoulders. 

“Light Sky, get us out of here,” Noriko commanded. 

Light Sky teleported once more, taking Noriko with it. 

Finally, Levy breathed a sigh of relief. She put the gun down and turned the safety on, and immediately started climbing down the ladder of the apartment. When she reached the ground, Ciara ran over and gave her mother a hug. 

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” Levy told her. 

“Mom, who were they?” Ciara asked. “And what were those things they summoned? And what the hell is this!?” she shouted, pointing at her own Anima. 

Levy smiled. “That, my dear, is your own Anima: Bloody Storm. I’ve known that this day would come for years, but I’ve never had the strength to tell you.” 

She put her hands on Ciara’s shoulders. “I’ll explain everything to you. There’s a lot I want to catch you up on.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a novel I'm probably gonna never write. 
> 
> This is set in the same universe as my other short story "Jade and the Jessamyn Family," with Ciara being an ancestor of the characters seen in that story.


End file.
